The Nosebleed
by 26Chapters
Summary: Set in Season 4, the only difference is that now, Sara and Michael are married. He tries to hide his nosebleed, and she catches him.


She has patience. He doesn't. He can be patient, and he's perfected the art of patience, but he isn't patient. He doesn't show it when he is impatient, because masking his emotions is a natural automatic reflex. Waiting makes him nervous, and gets him thinking all sorts of things, possibilities that to him, ended the world. He's not patient, but he knows she is. She knows how to be calm and remain steady until she's by herself and can then vent. But with this, he knows her patience is running out, if it hasn't already, or maybe she keeps all her patience reserved fo him. Honestly, his own patience with his condition is leaning to the side of becoming a special kind of nuisance.

Right now, he can't cover up his tracks like he normally does, because this time, he's fully bleeding, like a gushing waterfall. The best he can do is bend over into the kitchen sink so the bleeding doesn't stain anywhere else. She said she'd be right back, in a voice he doesn't like to think about right now. In the beginning, she used to strongly insist, and somewhere along the way, her way of talking to him about 'that' turned to pleading, until she didn't speak about it at all.

Before he hears, 'Here, take this,' he feels her hand on his back, her subconscious way of always letting him know of her presence. He doesn't move his face away from the sink, or hold out a hand for whatever she's brought him. The excess flow of blood from his nose unsettles him, and now that she is here, he just wants her to take care of him. It's a strange vulnerability and frailty that suddenly comes over him, the want and need of protection and care. He doesn't know whether she senses his feelings or if it's just her being a doctor that makes her stand levelly next to him, gently pulling his face away from the sink towards her.

'You okay?' she asks him. He doesn't answer her, because even though she has asked, she doesn't expect an answer, not now anyway. He brings both his hands to receive the blood coming from his nose.

'It's okay,' she pushes his hands to the sink, 'Wash,' she tells him after she's opened the tap. He does as he is told, thoroughly removing any stain of blood on his hands.

'You need to relax,' her voice brings him back to the present, 'and take these.'

He thinks she is talking about medication, but she isn't. In her hand are cotton balls.

'I'm sorry,' he says, trying to look at her without upsetting his position. She hasn't spoken a word of it since she got him to sit on the stool, and started cleaning him up. The vinegar filled cotton balls she gave him, made the bleeding stop, but she still felt (at least that's what he got from her being there) that she needed to do more for him.

He sees her lips press together in response to his apology, and he sighs inwardly. Experience has taught him that by that she means that unless he actually went for real treatment, not her first aid treatment, he wasn't sorry. To him, everything must first blow over, then he would get treatment. It would be too late then, she used to say, now she just administers his injections like he is a stranger that she has nothing to talk about with. It hurts him, her new attitude to him hurts more than hurting her hurts him.

'Sara,' he tries again, this time prying the hands holding his face off, holding firmly onto her wrists, 'please look at me.'

'I'm going to say three words,' she says looking at his hands on her wrists, a little annoyed at having her work interrupted, 'and I want you to say whatever comes to your mind.'

'Sara,' he calls her name the way that he knows will always get her to look at him. She does look at him.

'I'm sorry,' he tells her.

It's not that she didn't hear him, because he knows that she did, she just looks like she didn't. He gives in to her instead, 'Is it a patient-doctor thing?'

'It's a me-asking-you-thing,' she replies flatly.

'Okay,' he nods in agreement, his inside secretly dreading that he will give the wrong answers.

'Nosebleeds,' comes the first word from her mouth, she wriggles her hand free from his grip.

There is an immediate answer in his head, and the way she is looking at him, he knows that she knows his answer. His nosebleeds aren't as important as getting over with the entire project.

'Scylla,' she says the second word after some silence has passed, wriggling her other hand free too. She waits, though really she isn't waiting, not for a spoken answer. Scylla is his priority at the moment.

They've been married seven months and counting, yet what they understand about each other, what they've come to know about the other, is enough to have a conversation on its own. They can have a conversation without almost smiles, thinking that he knows where this is going. Her face leans so close to his, that he only concentrates on that, and only later when he feels them sliding down his neck, does he feel her hands.

'Sara,' she whispers so softly that he thinks he only imagined it.

Suddenly, she's two step away from him, and all he's thinking is Sara, Sara, Sara. When he thinks of an actual decent thought, the answer she wanted to get from him, she's out of his sight.

So maybe his sickness isn't important to him, and Scylla is the priority to him, because being an altruist does that to him. But there's one thing, one person he'd give it all up for.


End file.
